Finding Consolation in the Book of Revelation | Prof. Nina Heereman

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2022

⏱️ 69 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given on March 21, 2022 at the University of California, Berkeley. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Dr. Heereman was born and raised in a devout Catholic family in Germany. Originally trained as a lawyer, Dr. Heereman experienced a deep conversion experience at the 1997 World Youth Day. This conversion led her to discern a vocation as a lay woman “celibate for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” and also led her to theological studies so as to “consecrate [her] life to the study and teaching of the Word of God”. She received an STB from the Pontifical Gregorian University, an SSL from the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and the very rare SSD from the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem and the Université de Fribourg. Her doctoral thesis “Behold King Solomon on the Day of His Wedding”: A Symbolic-Diachronic Reading of Song 3:6-11 and 4:12-5:1 has been heralded by scholars as a profound contribution to scholarship on the Song of Songs. Dr. Heereman is presently an Assistant Professor of Sacred Scripture at St. Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, CA.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute.
0:04.0	For more talks like this, visit us at tamistic institute.org.
0:08.0	Consolation might be the last word one would ordinarily associate with the Book of Revelation.
0:19.0	And yet it is exactly what the Holy Spirit intends to give us
0:23.7	through the last book of the Bible. The book of Revelation was given to the church at a time of
0:30.3	great persecution. That is, towards the end of the first century, when Roman emperors had declared themselves divine,
0:40.3	and all the subjects of the Roman Empire had the choice between either worshipping the emperor's image
0:47.8	or being put to death.
0:51.1	It was clear to the Christians that emperor worship was idle worship and would constitute
0:56.6	a direct breach of the First Commandment. Many of the early Christians preferred death to apostasy
1:03.1	and shed their blood in faithful witness to Jesus Christ. Yet, the whole situation of death and
1:10.7	suffering was very confusing to the Christians.
1:14.8	Why, one can imagine them asking, and we are still asking the same question today, why is it
1:21.7	that the evil one still has so much power over the world if, as we confess, Jesus has overcome sin,
1:32.3	death and Satan through his own death and resurrection. The monstrosity of evil that
1:37.7	perdures in world history constitutes an enormous temptation for the faithful of every generation
1:43.7	to doubt that God is really all-powerful,
1:49.4	all-knowing, and all-loving. Why does he permit so much evil and suffering? In response, God has given us
2:00.6	the precious book of Revelation. It constitutes an antidote to the temptation to confusion and doubt. Its symbolic language makes it very clear that the situation of those suffering Christians under the hostile Roman Empire typifies the situation of all Christians
2:21.0	of all times. So the Holy Spirit uses the situation of the first century Christians to give
2:26.5	us a picture of the situation in which every Christian of every time finds himself in. As the title of the book, Revelation,
2:37.4	illustrates very nicely, in this book, Jesus takes away the veil that covers the mystery of
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